FoodSaver® Blog

How to Reduce Your Family's Food Waste [Infographic]

With 10 million tonnes of food going directly into a landfill in the UK every year, reducing food waste is a top priority. Households account for nearly 75% of food waste that occurs outside the farm gate, meaning that it is up to us to make sure that we are doing our bit to cut down on food waste.

Planning your meals and making sure that you only buy what you need is a great way to get started, as it stops you buying ingredients just because they're on offer and wasting them later. It also helps you decide how much of each meal you need to make, because no matter how delicious that stew was, no one is going to want to eat it for the fifth evening in a row.

Sometimes, no matter how carefully you plan, the unexpected happens and you don't end up using the food you bought when you meant to. Whether you received an invitation for a romantic date, went for a last-minute catch up with a friend over a shared pizza, or you simply didn't fancy cooking that day, leftover ingredients don't necessarily have to go to waste.

Correctly storing ingredients is the perfect way to make them last a little longer. In some cases, you can increase the shelf life of food by weeks, months or even years simply by storing them in the correct conditions. So, instead of throwing that salad in the bin just because you are out for the next few nights or dumping that pasta because the use-by date is in a week, check out our guide on how to make your food last a little longer.

Storing food correctly is hugely important if you want to reduce waste and make ingredients last as long as possible. If you need a little helping hand, there's nothing better than FoodSaver's amazing storage solutions. Vacuum packing food protects it from oxygen, which causes food to spoil, and can increase its shelf life significantly.

For fresh food, this can give you an extra week, month or year to make that dish you were planning, and for cupboard essentials, it can increase shelf life dramatically. If you want to reduce the amount of food your household waste, browse our full range of vacuum sealing essentials on the FoodSaver website.